A plane carrying eleven people vanished over the Andes, and the mountain kept its secret for half a century.
Two climbers on a towering Andes peak found a big, rusty piece of machinery frozen in the ice. What was it?
An airplane engine The Rolls-Royce engine belonged to Star Dust, a British airliner that disappeared on a short hop from Buenos Aires to Santiago and was never found by searchers.
Hidden in thick clouds, the pilots believed they had already cleared the mountains. What did they decide to do?
Start landing A powerful high-altitude headwind, barely understood at the time, had slowed the plane down, so the crew descended while a cloud-covered peak still stood in their path.
The plane's last radio message ended with a strange word, STENDEC. Rearrange its letters and you get what fitting word?
Descent Nobody has ever fully explained the word, though one theory says it was simply rushed Morse code for the Santiago airport's code followed by "over."
Among the wreckage pulled from the ice decades later, which ordinary airplane part was somehow still holding air?
A tire The wheels also showed the landing gear was still tucked up, which told investigators the crew had no idea they were about to hit a mountain.
The crash set off an avalanche that buried the plane in seconds. Why do experts expect even more of it to turn up in the future?
The glacier is melting For decades the missing plane fueled theories about sabotage, secret documents, and even a UFO, until the slowly moving ice began giving the pieces back.
